How to Make Money Online - Your 2024 Guide
Deciding that you’re interested in earning more is the easy part. The tough part is figuring out how to make money online.
Fortunately, no matter your skill set and your level of experience, you can find a viable path (or several) for raking in the cash from the comfort of your own home. And we’re going to show you how!
Top 17 Ways to Make Money Online
It’s time to jump right in so you can learn how to make money online. You have plenty of options, beginning with:
1. Sell Online Courses
Share your wealth of knowledge with others (for a fee, of course) by putting together online courses and publishing them for the world to disseminate. From eBooks to video courses and workshops, selling online courses can be a lucrative way to earn money online.
There are some course topics that are evergreen, as people always want to learn about them. They include technology, marketing, business, video production, photography, art, and graphic design.
Then, there are the more up-and-coming areas of interest, from crypto to trading, AI, and the blockchain.
The first area of consideration is how you’ll put together your online course. Fortunately, you can always rely on the number-one platform content creators use to achieve their business aspirations, FreshLearn.
Geared toward online coaches, course creators, influencers, and content creators, FreshLearn lets you create the ideal course to appeal to your target market. You can assemble polished, professional playlists, eBooks, workshops, and courses through FreshLearn.
Double your revenue stream by selling digital products. FreshLearn has all the features you need, from memberships to checkouts, sales pages, coupons, referrals, and several payment options. Additionally, you can promote yourself, automate processes, and brand your online courses through FreshLearn. It’s no wonder so many content creators rely on FreshLearn, especially when you can sign up for free.
What Can You Earn?
How to make money online for beginners? It all starts with selling online courses. You can generate hundreds to thousands of dollars a month for each course, especially if you commit to this gig full-time.
That said, factors such as how you promote yourself (and what that costs), how many customers you have, and what you charge for your online courses affect your earnings potential.
2. Sell Your Photos
Do you have an eye for photography? You could turn your love of taking photos into a lucrative revenue stream.
You have several avenues to explore here. You can take your best photos and sell them to a third-party stock photo website, from Shutterstock to iStockPhoto. The photos can be of anything, but there must be a demand for your work.
You could also chase news stories, take newsworthy photos, and sell them to websites and publications. Yet a third way to make money from selling your photos is posting them on a website and letting people buy prints or even the originals.
Of course, you could always become an event photographer, wedding photographer, drone photographer, or some other type of specialty photographer, but you’re looking to make money online specifically. The strategies above will help you do that.
What Can You Earn?
It’s tough to say what you can make from this gig considering there are so many variables. For example, different stock photography websites pay varying rates, and even then, there’s a difference between a royalty-free image sale and an extended license.
You could sell a royalty-free image for a few pennies or a couple of dollars. Yes, I’m being serious. It’s not unheard of to make only 25 cents per image. You could also earn $100 an image, but it depends on the quality and demand.
If you can sell your photos under an extended license, you could pull in $500 for each sale. That’s where the money is.
3. Freelance Writing
It’s time to share your writing chops with clients as a freelance writer. You can find your first gig by applying on job boards, cold emailing on LinkedIn, or tapping into your existing network and getting a referral. You can also join freelance writing platforms, although those are competitive.
Once you get the gig, you’ve got to write your heart out, producing content that will help your clients achieve their goals. Those are usually related to online visibility, lead gen, and conversions.
You can use all sorts of tools for writing and editing, from AI (if your client allows that) to grammar checkers and sentence simplifiers.
What Can You Earn?
Ready to earn money online as a freelance writer? Like many of these jobs, the amount you can make depends on who you work for, how many jobs you do, and whether you’re writing part-time or full-time.
You can make a full-time living freelance writing if you’re looking for a career change. Writers can bring in anywhere from $10 to $100 an hour depending on the client.
4. eCommerce
Still wondering how to earn money online? Why not look into creating your own eCommerce brand?
These days, it’s easier than ever to do so. You can use a service like Shopify to build your storefront, or even eBay, Amazon, or Etsy. You should select a unique but lucrative niche to ensure your new eCommerce venture is financially viable.
Once you’ve chosen your niche, determine what you want to sell. Learn to write killer product descriptions, and make sure you take five-star photos of your products so they’re appealing to your target market.
Then you have to reach that market through advertising and marketing to bring in new prospects and maintain your existing customers.
What Can You Earn?
It’s a lot of work (and money) at first, but running an eCommerce business can lead to huge financial returns.
Amazon intelligence resource JungleScout states that 22 percent of Amazon sellers make between $1,000 and $5,000 a month and that the upper echelon makes up to $500,000 a month.
And that’s just on Amazon. Your earnings can look similar or even higher on other platforms, so eCommerce can be a very lucrative avenue to explore.
5. Affiliate Marketing
If you’re still wondering how to make money online, you should certainly look into affiliate marketing.
You can be on either side of affiliate marketing and earn money. If you sell products online like I recommended above, you can team up with an affiliate. They can promote your products in exchange for a commission fee per sale.
You can drive a lot of sales this way as you expose your brand to new audiences.
Another option is to operate as an affiliate. You need a following to be successful, as without a loyal audience, you won’t inspire people to buy. As an affiliate, you’d partner with other brands to try out and review their products.
You’d then share your experiences online. Your link to buy the product would be an affiliate link, meaning you earn a commission for every sale made.
What Can You Earn?
So, if you get into affiliate marketing, what can you hope to make? Affiliate resource Refersion reports that even beginners can pull in $1,000 a month. Intermediate affiliates can earn upwards of $10,000 a month, and the most advanced and experienced affiliates can make $100,000 per month.
6. Take Online Surveys
Do you have an opinion? Of course, you do! What if I told you that you can get paid to share it?
It’s true! Plenty of websites and platforms out there welcome people to participate in their surveys. You can earn cash for spending your hard-valued time.
Survey Junkie, Toluna, InBoxDollars, and Swagbucks are examples of some platforms where you can sign up for free and begin taking surveys today.
What Can You Earn?
Now, granted, the income potential for this gig isn’t very high. You certainly can’t make a full-time living taking surveys, and the money isn’t even enough for a part-time job. Since surveys tend to pay under a dollar to about $5 each for longer ones, you could expect to make maybe around $50 a month. If you’re especially prolific, it can be over $100.
7. Sell Digital Goods
Are you curious about how to earn money online with a more traditional job? You can always work remotely as a virtual assistant.
If you have prior experience in an office as an administrative assistant, you can easily transition into an all-online role. You’d handle the same types of tasks, such as checking and responding to emails, scheduling travel arrangements, making and returning calls, and setting up appointments for your client.
However, you’d work at home the entire time you do it, which is convenient!
What Can You Earn?
According to Indeed, you can make between $16.25 and $42.05 an hour as a virtual assistant, with an average hourly pay of $26.14.
9. Podcasting
Perhaps it’s time to turn your passion or knowledge into a podcast. While you can start a podcast on just about anything, there are differences between those you do for fun versus those you want to monetize.
In the latter case, you’ll want to stick to some preestablished profitable podcast niches, such as:
- Mental health
- Pop culture/celebrities
- Paranormal
- Fashion
- FitnessMarketing
- Finance
- Reviews
- Current events
- Entrepreneurship
- Technology
- Books
- True crime
How do you even start a podcast? It’s not that difficult, which explains its appeal. You should eventually invest in high-quality equipment, but beginner’s tech like a USB microphone is okay when you first get started. You should at least purchase a pop filter to lend your show more professionalism.
The hardest part is selecting a niche. Like the other ways of making money online on this list, your niche can’t be so obscure that it has few fans, nor can it be oversaturated. It will be harder to break through the market when you have so many competitors.
You can monetize your podcast in many ways. For instance, you can add membership tiers, where those who pay the most get to listen early and gain behind-the-scenes access to your show.
Here are some other ways to earn money from your podcast:
- Selling advertising space
- Syndicating and monetizing on YouTube
- Selling sponsorship
- Producing original merchandise for your show and selling it
- Making a course or eBook about podcasting
- Selling content upgrades
- Creating your own show app and selling it
- Offering coaching, consulting, or public speaking
What Can You Earn?
Since there are so many jobs a podcaster can do to earn cash, the potential income is variable. If we’re only sticking to the podcast itself, then you can hope to make a few hundred dollars for every 10,000 downloads of your episodes, anywhere from $500 to $900.
You can see how that can easily turn into several thousand dollars per month as your show grows. That’s why podcasting is one of the most popular ways to make money online.
10. Transcriptionist
As you continue exploring options for how to make money online, you should consider transcribing work. You don’t have to be a specialist to transcribe, as you’ll usually be trained on any software or requirements.
A transcriptionist will take audio from a video or recording and then type it out. Your work could appear in podcast or webinar transcripts or even closed captioning.
What Can You Earn?
Indeed reports that transcriptionists can make $11.65 to $45.81 an hour, with the average being $23.10.
11. Online Teaching
Another way you can share your skills with the world besides producing online courses is to teach online.
The range of online teaching varies extensively. You could teach those in another part of the world to speak English. If you have an educational background, you could lead other types of classes through the internet using a webcam.
You can feel good about your job knowing that you’re helping people every single day, even if you don’t ever meet them face-to-face.
What Can You Earn?
The salary range for an online teacher varies tremendously. Some make only a few thousand dollars a month, while others pull in more than $10,000 every 30 days. It depends on how qualified you are, your experience level, whether you’re a tutor or instructor, and what you teach.
12. Website Services
Do you have website qualifications? Well, great news! Website services are always in demand, and you can do this job from anywhere, including your house, the beach, or your favorite coffee shop.
Website services include web design, website hosting, troubleshooting, and site maintenance. If you offer all these services, you should be able to make a killing from this gig. This is very likely a role that could bring in full-time income once you get the ball rolling.
What Can You Earn?
You can make several thousand dollars for website design and engineering and easily pull in a five or six-figure salary if you turn this into a full-time career.
13. Graphic Design
Show off your design expertise by working as a graphic designer. You’d be the go-to service provider for anyone looking for logos, website graphics, email layouts, product images, magazine layouts, and anything and everything in between.
You can do graphic design entirely from home with a good internet connection and a library of editing tools like Adobe Photoshop.
Like freelance writing, you have to build up a client roster to succeed in graphic design. You should create your own website with a portfolio of your projects, updating it along the way to continue drawing in new clients.
What Can You Earn?
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics or BLS reports that graphic designers can earn anywhere from $17.04 an hour to $48.52 an hour. The median hourly wage is $27.88.
14. Influencer
Perhaps you want to join the elite echelon that considers themselves influencers. This is one of the most popular avenues if you’re wondering how to make money online.
As an influencer, you’d share products and services you love with your audience, trying to encourage sales. Brands would come to you, letting you try their goods for free in exchange for your feedback.
It’s a job many of us want to do, but how do you even get started being an influencer? Well, first, you have to build a following, ideally on social media. You also need a niche.
Once you’ve gotten those things, begin reviewing products and services you love for fun. Collaborate with brands you enjoy. Post regularly, and as your content begins building momentum, it might not be that long before brands start knocking on your virtual door.
As an influencer, you can monetize your career path through paid sponsorships and partnerships as well as your own merch line or perhaps products related to your niche.
What Can You Earn?
Your income in this role is dependent on how many followers you have. For example, if your audience is under 100,000 people, then you might only pull in around $200 per post. That’s still a good amount of money depending on how often you post and how much engagement you receive.
If you can increase your follower count to 300,000 people, then you can make $600 a post, or thereabouts. And if you achieve more than a million followers? Your posts could bring in over $2,000 each.
15. Train AI
Do you know a thing or two about AI? Perhaps you want to hop on the bandwagon while it’s still early days? Then you should look into training AI.
This is certainly one way to answer the question of how to make money online, and it’s an avenue I think many people will turn to in the future.
Training AI can mean different jobs. For instance, you can assist in data collection AI will use, or perhaps you evaluate its existing responses to improve them. You could also train AI models.
What Can You Earn?
ZipRecruiter, a job resource, has the salary of an AI trainer at $13.46 to $63.70 an hour, with an average hourly income of $31.
16. Video Game Streamer
Do you have what it takes to become a video game streamer? Nowadays, anyone can do it, but it’s getting monetized that separates the most successful streamers from those who do it exclusively for fun.
Becoming monetized on YouTube or getting invited to become a Twitch Partner will help you begin raking in cash on your streams. Your viewers can subscribe and send you regular payouts or make single-time payments.
Further, you could monetize your gig as a streamer by using Patreon or a similar platform and charging for membership. You might offer exclusive stream access for those who pay. You can also sell your own merch.
What Can You Earn?
Well, your earnings as a streamer depend a lot on which of the monetization methods above you explore and how well-known you are in the gaming community. Also, the amount of time you put into streaming definitely dictates what you receive out of it.
Most important though is your audience. If you have about 10 viewers, you might make $200 a month, tops. You can double that if you have 20 viewers, and continue increasing your earnings as you accumulate hundreds, then thousands of viewers.
17. Sell What You Don’t Wear/Use
If you’re still exploring how to make money online, why not check your closet? Surely there’s something in there that doesn’t get a lot of usage anymore. From clothing to shoes, handbags, collectibles, and electronics, the items that sit around taking up space can be posted online and sold.
You can explore general markets like Amazon, Decluttr, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Nextdoor. Try Gazelle or Swappa for selling electronics.
You have nearly endless options for offloading clothing, handbags, shoes, and accessories, such as:
- Poshmark
- Mercari
- Vinted
- Etsy
- Thredup
- Depop
- The RealReal
- ASOS Marketplace
- Tradesy
What Can You Earn?
That all depends on what you sell and what you’re charging for it. If you make it your mission to regularly acquire interesting stock, or if you go into a niche market like vintage clothing, you could make this gig a healthy part of your income.
Conclusion
And there you have it, more than a dozen creative, inventive ways to earn a buck. If you’re wondering how to make money online, I think you’ll discover it’s easier than you might have imagined. If you have the skills, you can pay the bills!
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